Chapter One: Introductions
Danny was a boy from a little town on the outskirts of the Sinnoh region. His full name was Daniel Numan, but his full name being used made his skin crawl so he told everyone that his name was Danny. He was a little shorter than most kids his age and he had rather unusual physical characteristics. His irises were an odd yellow color and his short hair, which was always a complete mess, was pure white. This had worried his foster parents at first because it didn't seem normal, but the doctors said that he was in perfect health. His skin was also darker than normal. It wasn't really all that much darker, but it was different enough to be noticable. Like a light tan after a short vacation. He wasn't the tallest, or the fastest, or the strongest boy in his town, but he was the bravest and one of the more intelligent kids you would ever meet with a complete lack of common sense. He had a good, chewy moral center; and he was the one kid who was always getting into trouble because he couldn't resist a good adventure. These would prove to be his most helpful assets later in his life. It was a chance meeting with an injured pokemon that would change his life forever.
Due to the town's geographical location, they hardly ever saw any pokemon traveling though the area. So, obviously, Danny was forced to do research through his computer as opposed to physically interacting with them. One day, when he was nine, he saw a Riolu caught in a chain-link fence on the outer edge of town. The pokemon was exhausted and wasn't going to make it out on its own. It looked like the Riolu had been traveling for some time and entered into more than its share of brawls along the way. Needless to say, Danny couldn't help but try to rescue the trapped pokemon. He took a few steps towards the Riolu and it suddenly whipped its head in his direction. This scared the living crap out of Danny, who had never seen a Riolu and consequently didn't know about their limited ability to sense those around them.
"What do you want? Stay back!" snapped the Riolu, obviously scared given his current state.
"I-- I just-- I just want to help." said Danny, startled by the pokemon's reaction to his existence.
"Like I haven't heard that before! I- I..." with that last syllable, the Riolu went limp. Danny assumed that the pokemon's shock at seeing him had aggravated his already fragile condition, causing him to pass out. Danny quickly ran over to the injured pokemon and carefully removed him from the fence. The Riolu didn't look like he was going to be able to keep itself alive without medical attention. Ignoring the pokemon's unusual weight, he picked up the Riolu and ran back into town.
Danny knew that his town was too small to have a pokemon center, but he also knew that his neighbor used to be a pokemon breeder before moving here. He should know what to do. After a few minutes, Danny arrived at his neighbor's house. He knocked on the door frantically.
"Mr. Harrison! Mr. Harrison!" he shouted. He heard the lock move and shoved with all his might on the door; knocking Mr. Harrison, who was on the other side, down to the floor.
"Hey! Be careful, Danny. I may be strong, but I'm not unbreakable. I mean, I'm almost 40!" said Mr. Harrison as he stood up and shut the door behind Danny.
"Mr. Harrison! I found this Riolu stuck in the gate on the south side of town. It passed out after seeing me. I think it's hurt bad." said Danny rapidly.
"Well." started Mr. Harrison, "First off, I told you to call me 'Brock', not 'Mr. Harrison'. Secondly, I'm not a breeder anymore. I haven't been for a long time."
"But Mr.... uh, Brock. You're the only one on this side of town who knows anything about pokemon care! Can't you do something?" pleaded Danny quickly as tears began to form in the corners of his eyes.
"You know I can't refuse, Danny." explained Brock, "I was just warning you that I haven't done this is a long while and I'm not sure what all I could do. With that being said, would you be so kind as to place him on this table for me?" Brock smiled at Danny and walked towards a table in the middle of the room usually reserved for eating purposes. Danny smiled back and followed Brock to the table. Brock took a blanket out from under a chair beside the table and folded it over twice to make a pad. He then put it on the table. Taking special care not to hurt the Riolu further, Danny carefully placed him on the makeshift bed Brock had constructed. Brock began to look over the Riolu, making notes on a notepad he had taken out of his pocket.
"Will he be all right?" asked Danny.
"He looks like he's been in more fights than he has been able to handle." replied Brock, "I'm amazed he was still conscious when you found him. Did he make any motions or sounds that indicated where he may have any injuries?"
"No." said Danny, "He just told me to stay away and that he thought I was lying about helping him. I don't think that he trusts humans." An odd look came up on Brock's face and he stared at Danny.
"What did you say?" asked Brock very slowly.
"I said that he shouted at me to stay away and that he said he didn't believe I was really trying to help." responded Danny, confused by Brock's question. Brock continued staring for a few seconds and returned his attention to the injured pokemon on his kitchen table. He placed his notebook on the table and requested that Danny retrieve some bandages for him. Danny, although still confused, obediently went over to the cupboard behind him and took out a box of medical supplies. He had spent a lot of his time at Mr. Harrison's house, so he knew where most of the items were.
"Thank you." Brock said monotonously as he immediately began to wrap up the Riolu. Danny could only assume that the wrapped areas were broken bones, as the pokemon had no open wounds. The Riolu had multiple abnormal swellings and visible bruising in various areas of his body. He looked how Danny imagined a baseball would look if it could bruise and swell up. The pokemon winced as Brock wrapped his arm. Danny felt a sudden, sharp pain in his own arm that dissipated almost as suddenly as it had appeared. He rubbed the area that had hurt and noted subconsciously that it was the same part of the arm that Brock had just covered on the Riolu.
It took a large portion of the day, but Brock eventually finished patching up the pokemon. After making up a more comfortable bed on his couch, Brock let the Riolu rest up. Danny had fallen asleep at some point during the proceedings and was collapsed in a heap on the floor next to the table at which Brock had been working. Brock walked past him on his way to the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room. He decided to let Danny sleep for the time being. It would be easier to look through painful memories without someone else watching. Brock slid the bookcase to the right, revealing a safe. He spun the dial around to input the combination and opened his vault of shattered dreams. He reached inside and pulled out a stack of journals, each one marked with the name of a different region. He carefully looked through them and took out a particularly battered book. The cover had the words: "The Aura: a research journal written by Brock Harrison." He blew off a thick layer of dust and opened the book, barely maintaining his composure as he read the first line aloud to himself: "Dedicated to Ash Ketchum, my friend." He continued to read.
Danny awoke to the sound of quiet sobbing, but didn't get up. He knew that Mr. Harrison had truly horrible events in his past, and that he would never open up that safe unless someone's life depended on it. Something very bad must have happened to that little pokemon. thought Danny, Mr. Harrison would never open those books for just anything. Danny knew that Mr. Harrison had opened the safe for a reason. He came in without knocking one time and found him reading one of the books from the safe. Never before and never since had he seen Brock cry, until now. Danny heard Mr. Harrison stand up and return the books to the safe. Danny slowly sat up and watched him stack them gently, carefully close the safe, and wipe the tears from his eyes. Brock stood up and moved the bookcase back into place. Danny expected him to go directly back to doing something productive, but instead Brock stayed put and looked at the floor beneath his feet.
"So, you were watching." Brock said after a few minutes. Danny's heart stopped for an instant before returning to its regular pattern. How did he know? "It's alright, Danny. That's just a little trick that I learned when I was helping a--" He stopped as he voice almost broke and tears began to once again form. He forced himself to finish what he was saying. "An old friend of mine. A very old friend of mine." Brock seemed to drift away from the world for a moment before continuing his monologue. "I met him 25 years ago, when he challenged me to a battle. I was the Gym Leader in Pewter City at the time." Danny knew where that was because of his constant research. However, he was not aware of Mr. Harrison's previous Gym Leader status. He was becoming increasingly curious about where this story was going. Mr. Harrison had never told anyone about his past before. Brock continued: "I knew there was something special about him as soon as I saw him. That being said, I couldn't just give him the badge. He needed to earn it. We battled and he lost. He left, beaten but not defeated. He came back the next day, just as confident as he was the day before. He called out the pikachu that occupied the empty space on his shoulder. I called out my geodude. His pikachu managed to fry my geodude with one hit. It had become amazingly stronger than it was before, but I knew it was no match for my onix. I called it out and almost won, but the sprinkler system activated and severely weakened my onix. As he was about to order his pikachu to finish it, he stopped. He wouldn't accept a win that occurred because of an accident. He called back his pikachu and left. I managed to catch him before he left town and I gave him his rightfully earned Boulderbadge."
"What?" Danny interjected. He sat on the couch next to the injured Riolu, staring at Brock. "Why would you do that? He didn't win!" finished Danny. Brock chuckled softly.
"That's the same reaction he had." explained Brock, "I explained to him that there was more to being a good trainer than winning. A good trainer needs to have a sense of right and wrong, as well as a deep friendship with his pokemon. He had those qualities, which entitled him to the badge. I also decided to join him on his adventure. I'm not sure why I did it, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to go with him." He stopped for a moment, apparently deciding how best to proceed. Danny just looked at him with awe. He was a Gym Leader? Why didn't he tell me? Then he remembered the books. Those must be journals from his travels. If those alone can bring back memories painful enough to make Mr. Harrison cry, I can't imagine what it must be like for him to be telling me his life story.Brock's voice snapped him back into reality: "We ended up going through the entire Kanto region together, as well as the Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh regions. Everywhere we went, I kept journals about what we saw and learned. This particular journal--" He picked up the one journal that was left on the table. "--was originally started as a chronicle of our travels in the Sinnoh region, but it became something more. It became a research journal for understanding the Aura. It all began in the Sinnoh region..."